The Challenges
As we were busy preparing for Christmas, we never knew what awaited us, until late in the evening when we started hearing gunshots from all directions. As narrated by Awfuil, a survivor of the 2023 Christmas Eve Massacre in the Plateau Village of Bakkos, a rural farmers’ community that lives at the mercy of gunmen. According to the Nigerian Red Cross Society, the Christmas attack affected 84 communities, caused 161 deaths, and 29,350 persons displaced. The Nigerian government has struggled to find a lasting solution to the conflict, which continues to pose a serious threat to peace and stability in the country.
After the Christmas Eve massacre, Our Skill Builders Community (IYDN-SBC) team partnered GlobalGiving to skill up 300 survivors and reintegrate them into a peaceful society, which is presently ongoing.
This new initiative is conceived to manage the future reoccurrence of this deadly ethnic clash to change the mindset of the future generation by using the outlined project activities to strengthen social bonds, through joint learning, team-building and exercise, it will also bridge the knowledge gap, providing access to educational opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach for rural farmers kids.